I first discovered Robin’s work on Instagram. They were so bold, so big and vast, yet without being deliberately shocking, just for the sake of being shocking, that I was immediately drawn to them.
As someone who has been practicing the nude self portraiture for years, I felt drawn to talk to her immediately. there were so many things I wanted to ask her. I feel even this lengthy interview wasn’t enough time.
Robin’s work, although primarily using photography, isn’t pure photography. She uses a lot of sculptural and painting elements in her work to create something that’s more a hybrid and conceptual. Robin is a professor at Webster University.
Originally, I was going to put up only the audio and the transcription of our conversation but there was something so sporadic and sometimes a little crazy in our talk, I thought, what the hell, let them see our faces too. After all, it feels appropriate, when both of us are so well versed in the art of nude self portraiture. This, in some ways, is just another kind of exposing. I also could not for the life of me figure out how to edit the video so this is it— in its entirety. Again, something Robin and I are accustomed to.
Below you’ll find a gallery of some of our work. But I encourage you to see more of Robin’s work which is truly stunning. Especially her more hybrid work (under sticky and repulsion/desire on her website): https://www.robinassner-alvey.com
And to see more of mine: http://www.bukusarkar.com
My self portraits are under Containment Diaries. The others on my website are very old and far removed from the kind of work I do now. The new work on Women and Bodies is not up on my website but there are several articles here on Substack which show them as well as a small, permissible selection on Instagram.
MORE FROM MY ARTIST TO ARTIST CONVERSATION SERIES:
THE CONVERSATION:
So from the little I gathered, I've got to have so many questions to ask you.
I don't know where to begin.
You started the self-portraits after your pregnancy, after you had children?
I was doing a little bit before then, but it was more kind of blurred in the background.
But yes, the the ones I'm working on now is after I had kids in during the pandemic.
When it's like I had a newborn and a toddler.
That's exactly when I started my self-portraits, by the way.
That's so funny.
, it's like when you realize you can't escape, you can't leave.
Well, in my case, I have a neurological illness, which sometimes leaves me bed-bound for days and days and days
oh wow
sometimes even for a whole month
So, for me, it started out of anger but also so definitely body issues
I want my fucking body back kind of anger kind
control that's frustrating
That was interesting to me that you also had some issues with the body that you
were frustrated with and maybe different issues
Pretty much as far as back as I can remember, I always had, you know, weight issues, issues with food, an eating disorder in college, and so I've always been interested in the body and then being not the traditional body we see in advertisement or in the movies but being kind of a real person and just exploring that. And I think photographing myself has helped me
And I guess having the girls help me kind of come to terms with that's okay.
I'm, with myself and I am okay.
I'm more comfortable being nude in my pictures than in real, than being dressed in real life or something.
You know, this is funny. So am I. I don't know if it's over time that has happened.
I mean, you post them on Instagram. I post them on Instagram. And I don't think of them as posting naked pictures of myself, you know?
Right. I don't either. I once gave a I'm also a professor here at Webster University. And so I gave a faculty talk once—about my work. And then a colleague in biology or something came over to me and was like, did you know you showed everyone your naked body? And I didn't think about that. It was my art.
Exactly.
Now I'm sort of getting a little tired of my self-portraits because I've been doing it for eight years and I feel where does it go next? I've decided— I just moved to Paris from New York—And what I'm doing is kind of similar to yours where I've decided to turn the lens on to other women who have issues with their bodies for whatever reason— but older. I would say plus. At least when you're in your s you have different issues with your body than once you have had children and you get older and you're getting to menopause. I've like photographed year old women and it's so… I want it to be at least a - year thing where I do at least or women
So, that's been kind of interesting.
You've done a few portraits of other people, too, I noticed.
Yes.
At the beginning, I guess where I think you were on my website.
Is that with food?
Those were.
Oh, my goodness.
What did you put on that woman's breast?
It looks so gory.
Give me some ideas, though.
It was like some kind of brown liquid on this.
Oh, molasses.
Ah, OK.
That repulsion desire. I have everything from peanut butter to nacho cheese to pistachio pudding. And it was just about kind of exploring the stuff we put in our bodies, put outside of our bodies. You're not supposed to rub food all over your body. And talking about how there's certain like sexual foods that you might think of as more erotic, like chocolate syrup or whipped cream. But I don't know many people that bring guacamole into the bedroom. Just kind of playing around with it, dissolving over the body. I love that series. I had a lot of fun doing that. I did start that in graduate school, finish it the year after.
So tell me about your the stuff that you've been posting on Instagram.
That's from your first series— the fragments? I don't know what you call it?
The new stuff.
Is it new?
Well, , just that whole fragmented kind of like technique that you use.
This started again over the pandemic. I started and I wanted to get back into making after the second kid and everything going on. And I was having a block and I did this sketchbook project out of New York where they send you a sketchbook and you make stuff in it and then you send it back. And so I started there. I'm like, how can I get images into the book? Because the pages were there. And I had a bottle of hand sanitizer on my desk. I remember alcohol transfers. And so that's where it started, where I transferred these images of my face onto this. I also sewed and did other things on top of it.
But how does it work?
Like you literally just take the transparency and.
Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you.
No, I'm very intrigued.
And so I print an image on transparency. Then I take hand sanitizer and spread that over another piece of paper or I've been playing with fabric a little bit. Then put the transparency over and roll it with a brayer or a bone folder or a squeegee; let it sit for a few minutes and then peel it off and it transfers the ink. It's based on the alcohol that's in the sanitizer but it started during the pandemic when you know we couldn't get enough hand sanitizer. I would now you know, I could buy bigger paper even bigger transparencies but i love that kind of bifurcated look; the separation because it distorted the body a lot
SO Once you transfer it with the hand sanitizer, then you create several of them and you kind of cut and paste ?
I put them together . I just put a piece of paper together.
You just put different parts, pieces in different places?
And because I really like that look. So when I'm choosing...
It's very, very, I mean, it definitely has an effect. And your pieces are big, you know?
They are. They become bigger than life size.
That's how I envision mine, too. Like, very, very large. The impact is important.
Definitely. And I like the idea of it kind of being kind of monumental. And like I said, trying to play on parts of bodies that people don't normally want to show, you know and again, distorting it because sometimes I'll zoom in closer to the body, or sometimes I'll zoom in further away. And so the image isn't like a perfect form. And that's, that's intentional. And I really like that look. So I'm using 13 by 19 transparencies or 8 by 10 and then bit paper that's 22 by 30. But sometimes I'll put the paper together and then I just use like adhesive linen tape to kind of put them together when I show them. But I'm also playing with the idea of separating them. So you see like white space between some of the disjointed pages.
No, I've never seen. Are you the only one who does this? Because I've never seen anyone else do this.
I don't know of anyone that does this specifically, no.
But also, beyond the technique, there's a rawness, which really drew me to your work, because that's kind of what I try to do myself. It's like, look at me, this is how I am, and fuck you, I don't give a shit.
Exactly.
And I love, I love photography, don't get me wrong, but I love using my hands and getting into it. And this kind of, I started, I used to be a painter way back when. And so this kind of got me back to that painting, like getting dirty, putting these things together, making these decisions on the spot. And sometimes I'll put like two coats two different or the same transparency to get a thick color. And they started to remind me of kind of old Renaissance paintings.
So how do you get the tone? It's just with the alcohol? Or can you play with the tones?
Most of it's just the lighting. I'm just using strobe lighting when I'm shooting, but just kind of embracing the yellowish.
I really like that a lot.
I did try some with some colored lights, you know, filters over the lights. I'm not sure how successful or not that they were, but I keep coming back to this. And I like the mistakes and, you know, when when I peel something off and it doesn't all come off. Sometimes I can control how the pressure that I put when I'm transferring it. And I just really love those strokes and those marks that can come from doing that.
And what about the series with your children, the motherhood series?
And so that started I think I started near the beginning kind of getting me back again into that of the pandemic. This is my, I guess, she's probably about four or five months here, three, four months. And just the idea of like being all touched out, you know, when you have a young kid and two of them and they're just always over you. They can't sit next to you, they have to be on you. And I was breastfeeding and just kind of that overwhelming of trying to take care of two children now. And I'm also older having kids. I'm forty-seven now with a five-year-old and an eight-year-old.
Well, I'm forty-eight. My twin just had a daughter, her third child. Her first child actually passed away a few years ago. It was horrible. So they decided they really wanted a second child in their family. And she said, well, I'm forty-six…Well, we were forty-six at that time. And she said, You know, my biological clock is not going to take any quick faster. I know this is the worst time in the world for us to get pregnant again. But if it has to be done, it has to be done now.
You had a full like normal, normal, pregnancy and everything.
I did. I was thirty-nine when my first was born and totally fine.
Even with the second one, you didn't need IVF or anything?
No, no, I was very lucky.
Sometimes, they say, I was on birth control for like twenty something years. And they said that sometimes that can preserve your ovaries. I was very, very lucky. Just, you know, a few months or four or five months for each. I had one miscarriage between the two.
For her last daughter, she needed a donor egg. Her eggs were no good. She froze her eggs for a long time, and apparently the husband's sperm was fine but her eggs were no good anymore. So they decided to go for donor eggs.
So she has an infant or young?
She has now two kids
Nice
And I'm not allowed to take pictures of them because if I take pictures of anything, they go on Instagram and I'm banned from putting pictures of her or her family on Instagram. Because for me, it's never about family. They're not like selfies. When I take pictures, I take them because something has struck me and I need to take a picture of that. And you know what that means.
The moment.
Whatever it is, something tells you you need to take a picture of that.
And then it's not like a selfie kind of (picture); Going to a party and taking a selfie with your friend. It's more than that. You know, the intent is at least more than that, let's put it this way. And then you're proud of it. And of course, you want to put it up on Instagram. Where else do you put it up? So I'm banned. I took lovely pictures of her first son. But I'm banned from taking pictures of her kids. Actually, she doesn't mind so much. Her husband, she's Indian. Her husband is American. He, funnily, is the one who's very, very anti. He's like, no, no, I did not want my children on Instagram.
So I think becoming a mother and just not being able to bond with other mothers at the time, new mothers, because I was so older. So much older. You know, I think that had a lot to do with this experience. And so for here, I would photograph us when I'm breastfeeding and I would layer the images. These were digitally layered on top of each other.
Oh, is that what it was?
Uh-huh. So you get that ghost-like and the multiple faces and because sometimes you felt like you had like you were… I felt like an octopus. I had I have all my hands and all these things and I had a boob here and you know.
And it really shows through. This is an example of using digitized, meaning software, I guess, like Photoshop or whatever?
Photoshop, just playing with layers and stuff.
I mean, a lot of times you see a lot of people doing kind of very...hopeless things with Photoshop that you're makes you think, so what, you know? You're just doing this because you don't know how to do this.
Exactly.
But yours is very, that's why I'm interested in the technique because you could tell it was so purposeful— what you were doing and why you were doing it. I mean both; both that series and the first one in your website with the long straight long big big what what do you call them?
I'm awful with titles
I know me neither.
I just I know they call them untitled image transfer and I just number them as I go through it because I…
And the ones I've been seeing on Instagram lately—there's one that looks like a weird embryo kind of thing. What is that?
So I'm… I'm playing with the idea of my body becoming more less recognizable or like smearing some of the ink so it it has that layer of like going back in space, more monstrous like. I just was working on a few yesterday that I just, I love that look, that kind of amalgamation of a human monster.
How do you even…
Like that…Do you know which one I'm talking about? The one that looks like a kind of fetus?
I don't know, to me it looked like a fetus.
Was it recent?
I think so.
OK, so it was on the 29th of May.
“My first attempt at hardening the fabric—I like the shape and that you see different things at various angles.”
Ah now I see your face on it a little bit. What is that?
So I just... I've been playing with...So I just essentially I printed on fabric and then I'm trying different ways to make it like almost sculptural.
That's so interesting. The first one, for some reason, my eyes are very bad. The first one, when I first saw it, it looked like a fetus to me and I thought: Oh!
I haven't found the right solution yet. Because I was thinking, I have a solo show coming up in January that I'm working towards. And I would love to, you know, everything's on the wall. I would love to have something in the middle. So like either hanging the fabric or making things like…because I like the way it looks on both sides, like self-standing or something. But I'm still in the experimenting phase.
How does your family feel about you're exposing your body or do they care or they think it's fine?
Well, I've always worked with the body, right? But my husband doesn't like it. I told him this is mine, I'm doing it. I've always worked with the body, so it wasn't like I was making landscapes and then we got married and all of a sudden I'm changing it to the body. He's supportive of me, but he's not a fan of the work. He doesn't like me exposing my body there. He's like, what is going to happen when my girls get bigger?You know, because they're around the work, they see it, you know. I'm very comfortable talking to them about my work. Just like deciphering the difference that it's art. It's not like I'm taking a sexy picture of myself, you know, to send to somebody.For the most part, I'm sure they'd rather me do something else, my parents, but they've been pretty supportive. But I do get, I think my husband doesn't like to really talk about my work because it's a sore subject. He wished I didn't do it.
My sister called, when I last referred to my photo, she pretends my photography life does not exist. And the last time we talked about it, she said, I don't believe in gratuitous nudity. And I was like, okay, we're not going to go there.
Stay away from certain topics, right?
We're just not going to ever talk about this again.
Right.I think people not in the art world sometimes just,
You know, my mom finally gets it completely. She she runs an art gallery.
Oh
And she's she you know, when she was younger, I guess she was an aspiring artist herself when she was you know, maybe before college or something like that. And she studied art history. Now she owns an art gallery for decades, mostly all Indian art— in Calcutta. She claims she doesn't understand photography because her gallery is mostly fine art. But she has an eye. And I remember when I took the first series of self-portraits and I hadn't taken my clothes off then. The clothes came off very much by accident. It just, I don't know, it just felt right one day and it just happened. And then there was this immense sort of power that you feel, empowerment that you feel, you know.
Oh yeah.
And she saw them and she said, wow, these pictures are very disturbing, but they're true. This is really how you look like on a day-to-day basis, you know? Not the somewhat of the later ones, but if you look at the really older ones, which are not on Instagram…Instagram's banned…Have you not had problems with Instagram banning you?
Right, I was going to ask you. So a few, they haven't banned me completely. Few of my posts, and it's like you never know which one, but a few of them have said, you know, that we're taking it down because of nudity. But I don't, not all the time.
How come?Because they're so blurred and distorted?
I don't know. I don't purposely censor them. Like, I don't blur any parts specifically. No, some people do. But I don't. And so I'm not sure...You know, I've challenged, when I've had a piece that was, you know, going to be taken down, I've challenged it. I can challenge it. And they didn't agree with me, you know, they kept it down, but you've had a lot of problems with it, huh?
I've been banned twice. This is my third account.
This is like, I've just given up. That's why, I just, you know, but where else does a photographer go? You need Instagram, you know?
Exactly.
So I had to create— so it's Bukuagain. You know, first it was Buku Sarkar, my real name. Then it was Buku is back and now it's Buku again. And I don't know how many more permutations of Buku I will have to go through. Facebook just recently banned me for…Facebook has given me several warning for pictures that were not even showing any frontal anything.
Really?
I don't understand. I'm sort of in some weird Meta blacklist
That is weird
And they banned my account for the last month in fact literally minutes before we got on the zoom i got my account back and i was so excited and I was going, oh my god my facebook account is back and I was like no no no you can't play with it you have a zoom call.
That is really that's really weird
Like I said, I don't know how.
And I don't post pictures on Facebook because there are a lot of aunties and uncles on Facebook. There was a time when I didn't know that they were talking to each other and posting each other's work like Instagram and Facebook. But now I stopped it. So it doesn't, you know, but I'm a writer. And I use a lot of my photography in my articles, you know, as images. But I mean, they're never full nude. I mean, there might be like a back of a person or something like that. But, you know, nothing that I thought was remotely offensive, you know.
Right. I don't know why.
I don't know.
But I don't use I only I don't use Facebook from my art is, you know, social or whatever. Except if I have a show, I might post about that. But I use Instagram for… that is so weird that something that they're, it looks like they're, what's the word? Seeking the wealth to be in you.
They've like blacklisted me? There was this other woman I remember I was talking to a couple of years ago. I was writing and researching on an essay to write for the New York Review of Books about censorship on Instagram. I think maybe that's when they first banned me or second time they banned me. I remember getting in touch with this woman called Janika Honey. She was an Australian woman. She used to take portraits of pregnant women at full moon.
Oh, OK.
and they were all sort of very pretty and there was a reason to it that I don't really quite know but sort of a more sort of philosophical reason as to why she was doing it but she said she got banned too and see your mother pictures they'll never ban it because a mother breastfeeding a child does not get banned. I was actually testing Instagram and I posted a picture of a tribal person from National Geographic to see what they would do. And they took that down, too.
That's awful. And I know they've tried to make different sites that are more art related, right?
There was like Cara, CARA . But I don't know.I haven't gotten into any of those.
I can't I can't do any more social media I mean this is just to sort of let kee everyone abreast as to what's going on when you have shows. At one time it was about connecting with people with you know like people from editors and things like that but even now I've decided I don't care about Instagram anymore if I really want to connect with editors I've got LinkedIn for that you know. I don't really need an Instagram as much. I just sort of kind of keep it going. I'm not even sure why. Just because when you tell people you're a photographer, the first thing they do is ask you for your Instagram thing, you know?
Oh, absolutely.
But it's nice, to meet people like this, you know, that we...
I like it for that. You know, I've gotten a few shows. People saw my work and contacted me through it.
It's funny, my first solo show was going to be just...Well, around , the same year that my sister's boy died, three years ago. And I was always a writer. I was never really a photographer. And it's only when I fell very ill. I have a very close friend. I wouldn't call him a mentor, really, because we were more equal. We were friends. We were more peers. But he was my sister's tutor at Oxford. And he came back to India, and he was working as a journalist. And he used to work with some of the very big-name photographers in India. I don't know if you would know of them or not. Anyway, but he used to do the writing part, you know.
And he used to, when I was very ill, he used to come and read to read stories to me, like literally like I felt like a baby, like lying in bed and he'd sit on a stool and read stories to me.
And when I got better one day, he said, do you want to go on a photo walk? And I'm very against, like, I don't use cell phones. So I said, what is a photo walk?
And he's like, well,you take your cell phone and you walk around and you take pictures of things you see around you.
I'm like,Okay, that sounds kind of fun. Let's do that. And it was just instant. Like within a second, I knew I had found something special. Like it was just natural, you know? And he told me and he went back to his place after the walk. We lived very nearby. He went back to his place and I went back to my place and I quickly, I didn't even have an Instagram account at that time. I think I just quickly opened one up. And I really liked what I took, you know, I mean, they weren't like great, but whatever. At that point, they were good, you know.
Oh, absolutely.
And he started posting his pictures and I was posting my pictures from my place and he was posting from his place. And it's amazing how different we were. We were walking the same walk, but how different things differently we were looking at things, you know.
Right.
But he told me then he said, Buku.
watch it. Dayanita is going to be looking out for you. Dayanita is sort of like our diva of photography in India, but she's a very mean sort of woman. She's much senior.She's in her sixties now. I mean, she really should be at a point where she's nurturing other people, but she's perpetually, like she gets very,very jealous and insecure when other people start photography. It's very weird. And he told me,my friend told me, he said, watch it, she's going to be what she's looking at it for you.
Anyway, over the years, that was .Then, you know, it all progressed and I sort of whizzed by. And he was going to curate my first solo show in Calcutta. And it was going to be like life-size pictures like yours. We were going to get an old, it wasn't going to be at a gallery. We were going to get an old sort of ramshackle, old ruined house, you know, with their beautiful old ruined houses. And that are just empty and abandoned and that are dark. And we were just going to plaster like literally huge, huge prints. And that was our idea. And I was so excited. And he passed away with COVID literally about three weeks before my nephew passed away.
Oh, my God.
I'm sorry.
Well, you know, I guess, I mean, I still forget that he's passed away. Every time I go back to Calcutta, we're never in touch when I'm in New York and when he was in Calcutta. But every time I go back to, I'm very reclusive. I do not meet people much. But he's the only person in Calcutta I ever meet.And we talk about everything from poetry. Literature is more his subject. So we sit and we bitch about Emily Dickinson like she's our next door neighbor, you know,kind of thing. It's like, oh, that bitchy queen, you know. And I still go back home and I forget that he's not there. Like my first instinct is, oh, I should call off. You can tell him I'm coming, you know. I still forget. But I don't know.It's weird. I still cannot even say that I feel sad about it because there is a part of my brain that just does not register it at all. Like, I just feel like he's somewhere there. He's still there.
Right.
To me, he's very present. So I don't know. So I don't feel, you know. It's just weird to think that when I go back that he's not there, that he's actually dead. And then I think about dead. What is dead?
Right.
For sure. it's hard. It's grief and , trying to process it.
Absolutely.
I mean, it was more natural with my nephew because, you know, it was a whole family and I saw my mother grieving and she had a hard time.
But with my friend, with Aveek, it was, I don't know, it's almost like it didn't happen. It still feels like it hasn't happened. Even now when I talk to you, it feels like he's around somewhere, you know, and I'll be writing to him like, oh, guess what? Sometimes I really, I feel like, oh, I have this really good idea and I should tell him about it. Then I remember, oh, wait, he's dead, you know?
Anyway. Is there anything you wanted to talk about?
Well, I just wanted to, what's your most current series?
These are the self-portraits.
What is it called?
Containment Diaries are the self-portraits.
And I just call them containment diaries because I started it during the first COVID containment. And it is kind of my personal containment because I was housebound for months and months at that point. So it was my own private lockdown too, I guess.
Sure. Those are really beautiful with the masks.
The masks were later. The masks happened a couple of years later. So if you look at the website,the series that you'll see just when it shows the pictures that you see when you just click on the statementaries are the original ones mostly.
And then the masks and costumes I did…The original I started when I was still living in Calcutta. And then gradually, I don't know, my photography kind of, I had my first art show in New York. And I was like, my mom's like, you have to go to New York. And I'm like, I don't know if I can travel. Like, I can't even walk. How can I travel?
She's like, you can't not go.
And I was like, you're right, I cannot go.And then I realized on going to New York that there's a lot I can do that I didn't
realize I could do.And then I decided to move back to New York. I mean, I've lived half my life, more than half my life in New York. So it was really great to go back.
And then I started the masks and costumes series, which I had a lot of fun doing. Then I stopped for about a year. And then last year I started a third series, which I attended, which is not up at all. I don't know if it's on my Instagram, but if it is, then it would be way down somewhere. But it may not be on this new account. I'm not sure.
But the third series was definitely very, very different.And it was very... It was much more theatrical. It was definitely about showing my body. The first one was more about, oh, poor me. I want you to see how pathetic I am. The second one was a little bit more about embracing myself. And the third one was really about embracing my body. But I was skinny at that point. I look malnutritioned when I look at those pictures now. And I call them the wonder years, but because something told me that something good is going, some good turn is going to happen right now. Like, I just felt like there was a good turn. And it's funny because right around that time I met, I was married a long time ago. I was divorced by or 2008 or 2009 I was divorced and I never remarried and I've never really seriously dated since then. And I just met my proper serious partner around that time. So now I actually want to do a series with him and me. He's a filmmaker, so he understands. He likes them a lot. So he gets it and he's fine with all of that. But I'm trying to get him in front of the camera. And he's like, I'm behind the lens. I'm not in front of the lens. But now he has his confidence in me. I think after like two years together, he's like, you're the only— he's been photographed by like Vogue photographers…Like he's he's a little older. He's about fifty eight. And he he lived in his he's French Moroccan. And he lived in New York back when he was nineteen or twenty , and he had no money. But he would get invited to all these really trendy parties with Anna Wintour and things like that. And he tells me these really funny stories. But he lived in the back of beyond of Brooklyn before Brooklyn was trendy or before even I would know what Brooklyn was. Early ‘90s, I think.
Anyway. And the reason I was telling you about this?
Having him in the in front of the camera.
I can't remember anywhere. I lost my track of thought.
Oh, He has this photographer friend who she must be about ninety years old now. Her name is Jean Paglioso. I don't know if you've ever heard of her. I haven't. But she used to be one of these Vogue photographers and she's photographed all the celebrities and she has a page on Instagram and they're good. They're actually pretty good. And he sat for her. She made him sit for her once. And oh, my God. He scammed me, actually. Because when I first saw him, when I first saw a picture of him, it was that picture. So I thought I was going to meet this man. And then comes this -year-old hunchback. And I was like, you cheated me.
But anyway. He said, you're the only other person other than Jean I will allow to take my pictures. I was like, OK, Mr. Snooty.
